Adoptive parents: support

We support adopters, children and families throughout the adoption process and beyond – our support doesn’t just stop when the adoption order is granted; adoptive families can approach us at any time.

Our adoption support offer starts at the very beginning of the adoption process and continues throughout childhood from early years to teenage and beyond.  Adopt South West staff have been trained in areas such as Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), Theraplay techniques, Life story work to ensure our interventions are purposeful. We will work with you to apply the skills you learnt in training and/or when caring for your own child[ren].

We are here to support you in your parenting task to maximise your child’s emotional, social and educational development.

We understand that adoption is for life and adopting is rewarding but can be challenging at times. We will try to offer a service that meets adopters’ needs or we’ll help adoptive families to find the support they need from other providers when necessary.

We have dedicated adoption teams available across the area to respond to queries, provide direct interventions and to give advice and training.

Key people in your adopted child[ren]’s life are their birth parents and birth relatives, here at Adopt South West we provide a number of services to enable your child to maintain positive contact with their birth family as well as supporting birth family members who have had a child adopted.

Adopt South West provides adoption support services on behalf of the local authorities Devon, Plymouth, Somerset and Torbay. Therefore, if you are an adopter, adopted person or a birth relative living in the Adopt South West area (even if you adopted through another agency, or from a different local authority), please contact us if you require support or advice.

Talk to us

An Adoption Support Services Adviser (ASSA) is a single point of contact to provide you with information and advice, signpost you to appropriate services and advise on how those services may be accessed.

The ASSA can also help you access other specialist services, such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. This includes NHS commissioned health services to meet the needs of adopted children.

Call 0345 155 1076 or email adoptsouthwestsupport@devon.gov.uk